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It's probably not accurate to say that Canonical hasn't had a significant impact on the Linux community. I'm not sure that things would be much improved over the barbaric state desktop Linux was in ~7 years ago.

True. In the past they had very significant impact on Linux, especially in adopting Linux for "normal users" like excellent PPA system or automatic "user friendly" installation of closed source (graphic drivers, flash plugin) or patented software (mp3 and other codecs, etc.).

True. In the past they had very significant impact on Linux, especially in adopting Linux for "normal users" like excellent PPA system or automatic "user friendly" installation of closed source (graphic drivers, flash plugin) or patented software (mp3 and other codecs, etc.).

Sadly, it is the past

Eventually somebody else will come along to pick up the slack. Maybe that's the Mint guys... maybe elementaryOS... or maybe somebody new altogether.

Eventually somebody else will come along to pick up the slack. Maybe that's the Mint guys... maybe elementaryOS... or maybe somebody new altogether.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for:
* Red Hat
Sadly, they are doing everything what they can to not be associated with "Linux on desktops". For them there is only one kind of desktop - corporate desktop...
* Vavle SteamOS
Sadly it will not be "Linux on desktops"... It will be something like "Linux on consoles"...

Sounds like it has been mothballed pending partners rather than cancelled completely.

Which basically means "it's cancelled but we don't want to use that word".

When a project gets mothballed, it usually stays there, because by the time someone looks at it again, the world has moved on - all the flashy new stuff you built is now years obsolete, code has bit-rotted as APIs changed, and all in all, it needs huge investment to resurrect.

It's probably not accurate to say that Canonical hasn't had a significant impact on the Linux community. I'm not sure that things would be much improved over the barbaric state desktop Linux was in ~7 years ago.

Impossible to say really, who can saw for sure - maybe someone else would have filled the place of Ubuntu if Ubuntu had been absent... who knows?

Nevertheless, of course Ubuntu has had a big impact, anyone can see that. There's lots to be thankful for to Canonical for their past work in making Linux more usable and better known in the mainstream.

These days though, Ubuntu's value on the desktop is mostly providing a base for Linux Mint

Impossible to say really, who can saw for sure - maybe someone else would have filled the place of Ubuntu if Ubuntu had been absent... who knows?

Nevertheless, of course Ubuntu has had a big impact, anyone can see that. There's lots to be thankful for to Canonical for their past work in making Linux more usable and better known in the mainstream.

These days though, Ubuntu's value on the desktop is mostly providing a base for Linux Mint

- The livecd that installs
- The nice installer
- Automatic multimedia codecs
- Automatic closed drivers
- Nice clean theme
- Good defaults
But that was a while back. I know Unity was a step backwards especially with defaults and since Unity I don't know of any good innovation.

Not surprising. Why would they release Ubuntu for Android when they are planning to release their own OS and phones that support the feature?

Not only that, but U4A was basically a tech demo, proving that Android-grade hardware can handle full-desktop level Linux, by having a Ubuntu chroot inside an android system.
But in practice, the other way around makes more sense:

Running a full Ubuntu distro, with a special emulator for Android application.

(Which is the direction that both Ubuntu and others like Sailfish OS are taking).

Originally Posted by Danniello

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for:

I'm personnally very happy with opensuse.
Nice user-friendly setup tools (yast).
Vibrant community of 3rd parties (packman, all the repositories at suse open build server, etc.)

But I, too, think that SteamOS is going to play an important role (even if it's not a Linux Desktop) the same way that Google's Android did with phones.